THE IMPACT OF UNIONS ON JOB SATISFACTION: A REVIEW

Year 2022, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 140 - 154, 23.03.2022

Sinan Özyavaş

Abstract

In the last 40 years, the effect of unions on job satisfaction has attracted the attention of those working in
the fields of economics, industrial relations, and industrial psychology. It is known that in most of the
studies in the literature, this effect results in negative and ‘out of the reasonable framework’. In studies
published in recent years, it has been found that the direction of this effect has changed. This shows that
the relationship between the union and job satisfaction is more complex than it seems. Thirty-five studies
published in English included in the analysis section of this review by searching the Web of Science®
database are included in the SSCI, SCI-Expanded, ESCI, CPCI-SSH indexes. Research articles, conference
proceedings, and early access articles are included in the database search. In the literature, it is seen that the
union membership status of the employee, the rate of unionization, the employee's being within the scope
of the collective labor agreement and the existence of a union in the workplace are determined as the 'union
variable'. In the 'exit-voice' hypotheses, the concurrent relationship between 'union variables' and job
satisfaction is often not taken into account. In the 'reverse causality' hypotheses, it is seen that 'instrument
variable' and 'fixed-effect' models have been developed to solve the endogeneity problem caused by the
concurrent relationship. In the 'discussion and suggestions' section of this review; It is discussed how the
effects of unions on job satisfaction can be tested in labor relations systems where the benefits obtained
from the union gains do not depend on the membership status and the employees do not have the opportunity
of collective labor agreement through the unions. In this framework, it is suggested that the employee's
perception of union effectiveness scales, which are created in Likert type, should be determined as the predictor variable and the effect on job satisfaction should be tested instead of the predictive variables
measured at the dichotomous level.

Keywords

trade union, job satisfaction, quality of work-liife, job dissatisfaction

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